


One Last Time

by avulle



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fix-it fic, Gen, Inexplicably Silent Bow because i don't know how to write bow, Like, Minor Entrapta, Minor Glimmer, Post Season 3, Season 3 Spoilers, and i didn't mean to write angst, arguably?, but this is catradora it appears angst is required, i didn't want to write angst, literally spoilers in the summary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2020-11-28 06:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20961659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avulle/pseuds/avulle
Summary: [Repeat: Spoilers for end of Season 3 in the summary, be aware]It has been three months since you’ve seen her.  Three months since Angella vanished into whatever was beyond that portal, since Glimmer became queen (since Glimmer started becoming a little thinner, a little more hollow-cheeked, every day).It’s been three months since you’ve seen her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the second person present because I am an inveterate homestuck.
> 
> Look, I have some strong feelings about Catra and Adora, okay. Some Strong Feelings.
> 
> In answer to the very good question "Where is Scorpia?" The answer is: living her best life. Off screen. 100% a-okay. Totally fine. (I forgot she existed, and don't know how to put her back in now.)

It has been three months since you’ve seen her. Three months since Angella vanished into whatever was beyond that portal, since Glimmer became queen (since Glimmer started becoming a little thinner, a little more hollow-cheeked, every day).

It’s been three months since you’ve seen her.

Broken, fractured by the portal she opened, blaming you for it all.

Staring at you with fear in her eyes as she ran away from you, for the first time in your entire life.

It has been three months since you’ve seen her.

(You see her every night. In your dreams, she comes for you, stalks you, blames you.)

(Everything, it’s all your fault.)

(It’s not, and you say so, you believe so, but she still says it, her face fractured and broken.)

(“I did this because of you.”)

(“Everything wrong in my life, it’s because of you.”)

(When you wake up, you remember, back Before, when she used to say you were the best thing that ever happened to her.)

(You don’t cry. You haven’t cried since Angella died.)

(Glimmer looks at you kinda funny because of it, her eyes over her hollowing cheeks sad, and kind of confused. It’s been a long time since she last came in contact with your Horde upbringing, you suppose.)

“I found her.”

You look up, and Entrapta smiles at you gleefully. She’s back with you now, kind of. Sort of. Now that you rescued her from the island Catra exiled her to. Princesses can’t really be put in jail, so she’s just kind of…

Here, now.

She’s the same as she always was. Same as she was before. Like it never even happened, like she never tried to kill you. Mermista yelled at her (you didn’t even know Mermista was capable of yelling), and Entrapta had just stared back, looking vaguely bewildered at why this was happening to her.

(She doesn’t think she did anything wrong.)

In her hands right now is a datapad. It shows a map, and on the map, two blinking dots. One green, one black.

“I also found Hordak! Look, he’s the green one. I thought green would look good on him, but he didn’t believe me.” She looks, wistfully, off into the distance.

You wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t.

You take it.

“Thank you,” you say, and she smiles again, cradling her face in her hands, her legs swinging as she does a little jig with her hair.

“Call me when you find them! I hope they’re okay!”

If they are now, they won’t be for very long.

The Horde is broken, shattered. The army is dissolving, half of it deserted, a quarter of it starving, the other quarter scattered across Horde bases across Etheria.

Catra and Hordak are on the run, hiding outside of Horde territory.

Hiding from you.

You won’t let this happen again.

You saw the world, coming apart at the seams.

Splitting, breaking, shattering—

You won’t let that happen again.

“Me too,” you lie, and your smile is fake, but Entrapta doesn’t notice, and wanders away, into pseudo cave she has built out of broken horde machinery she is putting back together with giggles and smiles.

You leave the room, go up to the roof, and Swift Wind is waiting for you, his mane majestically blowing in the wind, posing.

But… he’s not smiling. He’s trying, trying to be himself.

But he can’t.

Because he’s you, and you are him―one soul, or something like that.

“Hi Adora,” he says, not quite managing his standard exclamation mark.

“Hi, Swifty!” you say, because you are a much better liar than he is.

As you lift off the ground, you call out― “For the honor of Greyskull!” and you’re away.

Catra is looking at you with terror in her eyes, again.

She’s trying to hide it with anger, trying to hide it with hate.

She isn’t succeeding.

“You were holding back,” she says to you, as she heaves herself to her feet, runs towards you.

“Of course I was,” you say, almost shouting, as she crashes back into the wall. “How could I not.” You are bleeding from dozens of cuts and scratches across your face, your chest, your arms. But they’re healing, and your breath comes to you, steady and easy.

Like you’ve done this a million times before.

Like you’ve come to kill Catra, a million times before.

Hordak is dead behind you, Entrapta's armor having failed him, without her available to repair it.

Swift Wind is…

Outside.

He doesn’t need to see this.

(You asked him not to peek, not to try and see through your eyes.)

(You hope he’ll listen to you, but you know he won’t.)

Catra is mid tirade, “―because of you! If you only―” but she isn’t running towards you again.

You meet her eyes, and whatever she sees there makes her fall silent.

She looks at the two halves of Hordak's body on the ground behind you. Imp is keening a low, mechanical cry, claws on Hordak's face.

She backs away from you.

She runs away from you.

Any other day, she’d be faster than you. If she’d run as soon as you’d come, if she wasn’t half starved from being on the run for three months, she could’ve outrun you. If she hadn’t come at you that one. last. time.

She’d probably have the energy to get away.

But it wasn’t any other day. She had come at you one last time, so she wasn’t faster than you, she didn’t outrun you.

She stares up at you, and Swift Wind, where he stares at her from behind your eyes.

She’s slumped against the wall, she doesn’t even have the energy to stand. Doesn’t have the energy to swipe at you.

Doesn’t have the energy to scream at you.

(And Catra would never beg.)

As you watch, the fear in her eyes recedes.

Her eyes fog up, unfocus.

Just like―

When you were six, and the two of you broke into Weaver's lab to stare at the crystal and Shadow Weaver caught you and her shadows curled around Catra and only Catra―

And when you were nine, and Catra had torn out Octavia's eye, and she couldn’t move as Shadow Weaver lifted her hand, and―

Every time you held her afterwards until she would look at you again. Until she would look at anything again and―

She is looking at you like she always looked at Shadow Weaver, before Shadow Weaver did what Shadow Weaver only ever did to Catra.

And―

You just.

You just can’t do it.

Not Catra.

Why couldn’t have been anyone but Catra.

You slam your sword into the wall above her head in an explosion of white light, and when it clears, you are Adora again, all of the cuts on your body healed, and―

Before you, Catra sunken cheeks are full, the bruises that had purpling beneath her fur are gone, the eye that had swollen shut from where it had gotten cut by broken concrete is open.

You fall to your knees before her, as her eyes clear.

“How could you?” you say, and you bow your head, expose your weak, soft, mortal neck. “You pulled that lever just to spite me. You wanted to destroy the world―just because it had me in it. Catra―” you raise your eyes to hers, and her bi-colored gaze burns into your own. “How could you?”

She doesn’t say anything, at first. She just slowly looks up at the sword, embedded in the wall above her.

“You were my best friend for fourteen years―and you tried to blow the whole damn world up just to kill me. Did it mean nothing to you?”

With that, her eyes her eyes snap to back to you, and she surges to her feet, towers over you.

“It meant everything to me! You were everything I had, until you left me behind! Until you―”

“I asked you to come with me!” you are on your feet with her. “Over, and over, and―” you pull the sword out of the wall, and pitch it across the room, because it is in the way “―over again! You never came! You abandoned me!”

There is a moment of silence, in which Catra stares at you, open mouthed.

“You think I could have just left everything―”

“You said I was your everything!”

“Leave the Horde―”

“You hated it there! You hated everyone! Why did you stay?”

She is barely a breath away from you, so close that you cannot see both of her eyes in focus at once. Her chest is heaving, and so is yours. Her claws are out, digging into her palm, dripping blood down onto the concrete beneath you.

“You expected me to just follow after you, like a dog?”

She comes closer, uncurls her bloody claws.

“What?”

“Become a prisoner of the fucking rebellion, just to be near you?”

“I would never―”

“They never could have accepted me―they would have tossed me in a cage. Look at me, Adora! What could you have―”

“I am She-ra!” you bellow at her. “And if they dared to throw you in a cage―” you clench your fists, and your own blood wells up around your nails “―I would have torn it apart my bare hands.”

There is a moment of silence, as your vision slowly clears of bloody red, at the thought of Catra in a cage.

(Again.)

(Memories come to you, unbidden.)

(Gold and blue eyes, staring at you through the bars of a cage, Shadow Weaver's voice, “This is what happens to―”)

“Liar.”

Silence.

You step back from Catra. She isn’t meeting your eyes, anymore. There isn’t anger there, anymore.

Just despair.

You take a deep breath. You take another step forward.

Catra looks back up at you, the despair filtering back into hate.

“Why did you want to kill me, Catra?”

“I was sick and tired of always being second best. Goody two shoes, always acting like you’re better than me―our entire fucking lives.”

(“I love you,” she used to say to you.)

(“I love you, too,” you used to say back to her.)

(When you were five and seven and eleven and fifteen and seventeen and not nineteen.)

You remember what she asked you, with that smile on her face, what you had said, that had killed it.

“This is about Shadow Weaver?”

Catra says nothing.

“You wanted to kill me for her?” you ask, your voice rising.

“I wanted to kill you for me!”

“You wanted to kill me so she would love you more than she loved me?”

Catra hisses at you, and swipes long, bloody steaks down your face. You catch her by the wrist, and she grimaces at the tightness of your grip.

“Are you kidding me?” Your voice is rising, echoing off of the concrete. “For Shadow-Weaver―her love is nothing but poison, she has never touched anything she has not destroyed, and you―”

You feel the bones of Catra's forearm grind together under your grip, so you release her.

“You wanted her love more than you wanted me.”

Catra does not hiss at you again. She just looks at you, at the three long stripes across your cheek.

You look down at her claws. One covered in her blood, the other in yours. You take her wrist, the one you didn’t almost break, and she doesn’t resist you.

You can’t stop her. If anyone touched her, you’d kill them yourself. If anyone put her in a cage, you’d tear it down.

You lift her claw to your throat.

“If you want kill me so bad,” you say, press her claws around your larynx. “Then do it.” Catra does nothing, says nothing. “There's a datapad outside. I’m sure it can tell you where Shadow Weaver is, you can go tell her, go brag to her about how you killed me, how you’re better than me now, how―” Her claws tighten on your throat, but you don’t stop talking, “―how she should love you first now, how you can rebuild the fucking Horde together―” tighter still “―do it, Catra! I’ve seen you do it, rip someone's throat out, make them choke on their own blood!” You step closer to her, so when she does it she’ll be fucking covered in your blood. “Come on Catra, if you want me dead so bad, you don’t have to go destroy the fucking world, just kill me. Right here, right now.”

You meet Catra's gaze, refuse to grimace as her claws dig deep into your throat, and―

Then, beyond the hate, the anger, an expression of unspeakable agony plays across her face.

She pulls her hand out of your grip, claws leaving your skin, and she steps away.

“You too, huh?”

She doesn’t answer you with more than a grimace.

You turn away from her, make your away back to the sword. You see her tense behind you, entire body rigid, but you drive the sword back into the ground once you’ve healed your face and her wrist and hands.

“What are we gonna do, Catra?” you ask her, coming up beside her, and then sliding down the wall she had been collapsed against, what already feels like a lifetime ago.

Catra looks down at you, her eyes mistrustful.

Slowly, she sinks down beside you.

“You didn’t bring your little posse of princesses with you?” she sneers.

“I didn’t need them.”

(You didn’t want them to see you kill someone.)

Catra hisses, but doesn’t deny it.

After another moment of silence, Catra actually answers you.

“I’m not going to your stupid rebellion.”

“What rebellion?” you say, and shrug in the general direction of where you abandoned Hordak's corpse. “There's nothing to rebel against, anymore.”

Catra coughs out a low, mean chuckle.

“I won’t go back, and let your stupid princess friends lock me up.”

You don’t bother trying to correct her, say that you wouldn’t let them.

You already tried that.

_ Liar _ .

“There are First One Temples that only I can open,” you say.

Catra is silent for long enough you have to turn to check that she hasn’t vanished.

“You would leave your little princess friends for me?” she asks, her eyes still hard, her face still tight.

But there's something under there that you almost recognize.

“If you would stop Killing people.”

( _ Now that The Horde is dead. _ )

Her lips twitch into half a smirk for half a second.

“Prove it,” she says. “Right now―go tell them you’re leaving, you’re taking that stupid sword with you, and that you’re coming with  _ me _ .” She bares her teeth. “I want hear them fucking cry.”

You look at the hate in Catra's face, and you remember a time when her face was open, when she looked at you.

When you were the only person she’d really smile at it, her eyes crinkling her—

You close your eyes against the memories, too much for you to handle right now, and you sigh.

“Okay.”

You stand, and slowly, a little hesitantly, Catra stands beside you.

You stop at the sword, and you shrug at it.

“Take it,” you say.

Catra looks at you for a long moment, and then slides it from the stone, wobbles under its weight and then rests it on her shoulder like it doesn’t weight like half of what she does because her bones are hollow.

Over Hordak's body, past the still keening Imp, out to where Swift Wind is waiting, posing―

Smiling.

“Hey, Adora! Hey cat lady! Adora, you’re okay! Cat lady, you’re not dead!”

“Hey, Swifty.” You dig through his saddlebags as Catra hisses at him. You take out the datapad Entrapta gave you, and poke at it until Entrapta's mask shows up on the screen.

“Adora! You’re not dead!” she flips the visor up, and grins at you. You tilt the screen towards Catra, and she yeeps. “Catra, you’re okay!”

Catra grunts.

You tilt the screen back to yourself, just as Entrapta asks, “What about Hordak?”

Catra laughs a low, unpleasant laugh.

“The princess here cut him in half.”

Entrapta's smile stutters.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh.”

“Imp is still alive,” you tell her. Entrapta's gaze snaps back to you. “If you want him. It.”

Entrapta tries to smile, but doesn’t really succeed.

“Can you put me in contact with Glimmer and Bow, please?”

“Sure,” Entrapta says, her face still trying and failing to smile.

Catra comes closer to you, close as she can be without showing up in the video feed. She's smiling a mean smile.

The smile she smiled after she took out Octavia's eye. The smile she smiled after she kicked Lonnie down a flight of stairs. The smile she smiled―

“Hi Adora,” Glimmer says, slumped in her new, too-big throne with a bit of a tired sigh. Her cheeks are hollower than ever, her sparkles dimmer. “What’s up?”

She’s smiling at you, though.

From her side, Bow waves.

You look down at their faces, tired but happy to see you.

You look at Catra.  _ Say it _ , she mouths at you.

She could just sidle in screen, explain herself with a smirk, but no. She wants  _ you _ to say it.

“I’m not coming back,” you say.

Glimmer blinks.

She re-focuses her eyes on you.

“What?” she says.

“I found Catra out here,” you say. “We made up. I’m not coming back. I’m running away with her.”

Glimmer coughs out a laugh. Smiles weakly.

“Haha,” she says. “Funny joke.”

“I’m sorry,” you say.

She stops smiling.

Bow never started. He looks at you like he knew this was always going to happen. He opens his mouth to speak, closes it. Looks away.

“Come back,” Glimmer says, eyes shimmering. “We need you.”

Glimmer is starting to cry.

“I just lost my mom, Adora, please,” she says.

To your right, Catra starts to laugh. Glimmer's face twists in horror, and Bow brings his hand to his mouth.

Catra sidles in at your side.

“Hello, Shimmer,” she says, still laughing. “Stick. I have a message for you.” she leans in crowds you out of the screen, until its filled with her, and her sharp, predator teeth as she grins.

“Eat shit.”

Catra retreats, and your face fills the screen again. Glimmer is looking at you with betrayal in her eyes, and Bow isn’t looking at you at all.

“I love you,” you say. “I’ll miss you.”

And it's true. You love them more than anyone in the whole world―

Save one.

But you can’t always put two different people first, and this choice―

This choice was made for you.

If you were making it yourself, maybe you wouldn’t choose this way, but―

“Then come back! We need you! Brightmoon needs you!”

Maybe someday, when Catra trusts you again, you can go back.

Maybe they’ll even forgive you.

“ _ I _ need you. How can I do this without you?”

You don’t cry. Not yet.

“I’m sorry,” you repeat. “I love you.”

Glimmer's form fizzles, as she tries to teleport to you, but you’re too far away.

She grits her teeth, still crying―

“Fuck you!”

First time you ever heard Glimmer curse.

“Are you happy?” you ask Catra.

“Ecstatic,” Catra says, and she almost looks it.

“Goodbye,” you say to the datapad, your voice not even choked up, and then, once it’s off, you lift it to your face, and clench your eyes closed.

“Are you… Are you crying?”

Catra doesn’t sound like she’s smiling anymore.

“Give me a second,” you say, and this time, your voice is choked up.

To your surprise, she gives you a second.

Swift Wind nuzzles your neck, under the the datapad, and you toss it to the side, and lean your face against his.

“You would cry for them,” Catra says, once you’ve let go of Swift Wind, looked back at her. “But you didn’t cry for me.”

“Why would you think that?” you ask her, remembering long, lonely nights in a room so big your sobs echoed.

When you slept, your feet were always so cold.

You wipe at your face, and when your vision clears, you see Catra properly, and a little bit of that hate, a little of that anger, is gone from her face.

Between you, her tail twists and curls and reaches out for you. It curls around your wrist, the fur feather soft and warm.

You tangle a finger in it, twining your finger through the softness, and it’s been―

So so long.

You had forgotten what it had felt like.

Catra finally notices, and her tail slips out of your grip, slithering around your finger as it goes.

She looks at your finger a minute longer before saying “Well? Are we going to one of your secret, definitely-a-rebellion-trap temples or what?”

You stroke Swift Wind's mane a little bit, and you say, “Hop on. The closest one's only a couple miles away.”

When you do take off, she holds on to you tight, her tail straight out behind her. You can feel her bony chest and shoulders pressed awkwardly against your back, and near the nape of your neck you can feel just the barest hints of that downy soft fur of her ears where one of them twitches against your skin.

You almost smile.

Glimmer and Bow and Perfuma, when they hugged you they were soft and warm and kind but―

You grew up with Catra. The only non violent physical contact you ever got was from her, and without that feeling of fine fur against your skin, it just―

It just didn’t feel right.

With each twitch of Catra's ear against the back or your neck, the knot inside of you, hardened over this last year, gets a little bit looser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's probably gonna be more. I started this cause I wanted to write some stress-free angst-free Catra and Adora cuddling. As you might have noticed, that is not what this fic is. But I swear it's me setting up for those sweet sweet angst-free Catradora cuddles. Like: Catra is covered in fur. Like, 100% covered in fur. Did you know that? Not enough people focus enough on this key Catra feature. This is a problem I wish to rectify.
> 
> (Although it probably doesn't look that way, Entrapta is my favorite. I have Strong Feelings about Entrapta. I will eventually probably write some of these Strong Feelings. This is not the fic for those feelings. This is my catradora feelings fic.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What was that? No one is interested in the continuation of a six month old weird angsty not-canon-compiant fic ostensibly set after s3 now that we have our catradora happy ending?
> 
> Yeah, well, I've written 150,000 words fics for dead fandoms before, so I'm not gonna let a silly thing like that stop me. 
> 
> This has been rotting away on my hard drive for the last like six months because when I wrote it I was a little hesitant to publish something feature boobies (this is me, growing as a writer). I just re-read it and found that I kinda dig it, so I figured I'd upload it for anyone else who might dig it.

It has been.

Two weeks.

Three days.

A couple hours.

You had been hoping that something would change, but… nothing has.

You are alone, in the shower. Single person shower stall, just like Bright Moon—

You’ve never gotten used to these. You have showers with your teammates, laughing off the bruises as the water washes away the blood. You take showers with your bunk mates, complaining about curfew, or how you couldn’t sleep. After dinner, talking about brick cake, and how you were kinda tired of everything tasting like brick (but what else could food even taste like?).

You only take a shower alone if you really have to, if you’ve had an accident, if you’re being punished for something―

This is…

You sigh, head against the white marble wall.

You only got Glimmer and Bow to shower with you once, and they couldn’t look you in the eye for a week.

And Gods.

Glimmer.

Bow.

You thought you were giving them up for Catra. The Catra you knew, the Catra who always seemed to end up sleeping on your feet, the Catra that―

The Catra that was your best friend.

But that’s not what happened.

She hasn’t changed. She still looks at you like she looked at Lonnie, and Kyle and―

Sometimes, like she looked at Shadow Weaver.

So―

God, you’re just so alone.

You wipe your hands at your face and they come back wet, obviously.

This was the nice thing about showers, in the fright zone. Showers were the only place you could cry in front of your comrades, because you could always lie, and say it was just―

The shower stall door slides open, and you turn to see Catra, barely half a foot away from you, the bathroom door open behind her. You hadn’t heard her come in.

“Hey, Catra,” you say, and your voice cracks.

She doesn’t say anything, but her face isn’t as angry as it usually is, so you reach out for her, cup your hand over her cheek.

Her nose twitches in irritation because Catra's always hated the shower room. She never liked getting wet―she’d duck out of it whenever she could, lie that she’d taken a shower by herself.

You have three pale scars in your right forearm from when you dragged her into the shower when you were seven.

Her nose twitches in irritation, but she doesn’t pull away.

You rub her thumb along her cheek, slicking down her fur in its path, relishing in the fine softness of Catra’s fur.

She’s been avoiding you, for almost a week. You had a screaming fight, and then you couldn’t seem to find her anywhere.

“Why are you crying,” she says, and it's almost like you’re eight again and she’s twitching beside you in the shower, flinching at each drop of water, wiping ineffectively at your face, trying to wipe your tears away.

“Uhhh.”

You’re still touching her, the fine fur of her cheek tickling against your palm. You should probably move it, but you really, really don’t want to.

“I’m not.”

These are the shower rules. Nobody is ever crying in the shower.

“I can hear you,” she says, ears twitching. “All the way in that stupid palace of a room you dumped me into.”

You feel your face grow warm. You remember how she always seemed to find you when you were crying alone in the shower room.

“Missing your stupid friends? Wishing you’d picked them over me?”

_ No _ , you want to say, but.

Yeah.

She snarls, and now, now she pulls away from you.

You want to call after her, but God you’re just.

So

So

Tired 

Of trying and trying and getting nowhere.

You lift your face into the shower stream so you have a little bit of self-deniability for the tears dripping down your face.

You must make a noise, or something, because Catra stops.

She turns back to you again, face hard.

“Really?”

You shake your head.

“Please―”

“You’re so fucking―”

“You’ve never made fun of me crying, Catra. Please. Please don’t start.”

Whatever Catra was going to say died in her throat. She doesn’t look like she wants to rip a hole in you, for the first time since you got here, so you decide to go for it.

“I need someone, Catra. I need you. I feel so alone, Catra. I don’t have anyone, anymore.”

Slowly, she comes back towards you.

“Now you need me,” she says, her lips twisted, not looking at you.

“Now I need you.”

“I always needed you,” she says, coming up to the edge of the stall again. “But you didn’t need me―you  _ replaced _ me. How long did it take―five minutes? For fourteen years of―”

“What did you expect me to do Catra? After you refused to come with me, after you left me behind in that village? They gave me home, when I didn’t have one anymore.”

“You could have come back!”

“No,” you say. “I couldn’t have. Not after I knew what we were. What I had been doing. I couldn’t have.”

Catra just stands there, just outside the shower stall door, twitching when the stray drop of water splatters onto her fur. The fur on her right cheek is still stuck to her skin from where you touched her.

“I missed you, though. It’s not the same, in Bright Moon.” You reach out to her. “They make you shower alone.”

“You expect me to just go in there, like this?” she gestures at her clothing. 

“Then take it off,” you say. You lean back, against the wall, try not to cringe at how cold it is against your skin. “Please.”

Catra glares at you, eyes narrowed, and then sighs. She pulls her shirt off, peels down her pants, tosses her undergarments on the top of the pile.

She steps into the shower, and immediately hisses.

“How hot is this thing,” she says, cringing back out of the stall.

They let you take hot showers in Bright Moon. You guess you had gotten a little too used to it. You turn the heat down, until the water's only lukewarm, and Catra checks it before coming back into the stall.

She hisses again, as the water touches her, but this time, it’s just her general hatred of water, rather than any particular problem with this water.

It's been a long time since you’ve seen Catra in the shower. Since the last time she came to rescue you from crying alone.

Humans look the same, wet or dry, but Catra doesn’t. The entire shape of her changes, her long, slender everything impossibly longer, her massive mane slicked to her head, make her head look both too large over her thinner neck and too small, with no mane behind it. She’s only halfway there, all of her fur below her stomach already stuck to her skin, most of her fur above it still dry (except for the wet patch you made on her cheek). Seeing it, you can’t help but smile.

“I’m glad you haven’t lost your sadistic streak,” she hisses. “Can I leave now?”

The shower stall was really not designed for two. You’re already closer than you’ve been since you’ve got here, and you’re still leaned up against the wall.

You stand up as she turns around, following up on her threat.

You wrap your arms around her shoulder, pulling her back into you. You haven’t touched her since you got here, unable to move past the death glare and the threat of mortal peril.

“Oh great,” Catra says to the still open shower stall door. “Wet, naked hugging. My favorite.”

But she doesn’t squirm away (Glimmer did— _ Adora, I love you too, but this is weird! We can’t do this! _ ), so you pull her closer.

This isn’t really what you’d wanted. Wet, Catra’s soft fur is kind of prickly, uncomfortable basically everywhere your skin is touching it. If you stay like this too long, you’ll probably end up weirdly red in uneven stripes, but—

God, you weren’t made to survive without human contact for so long.

(Without Catra for so long, when her tail made you think you could have something like you had before.)

So you hold her tight to you, clasping your hands together and squeezing her like you’re trying to absorb her through your skin, and you tuck your head into the crook of her neck, where her fur is still dry and soft, hidden from the shower under her mass of hair. You take a deep breath—”Gross, Adora”, and you smile against the fur beneath your face.

“I missed you,” you tell her. “I missed you so much.”

Catra is silent, no longer twitching under the drops of the shower, most of her body protected from it by yours. Her wet tail, drenched and now itchy instead of soft, twitches around your shins, your ankles, and you smile a little bit into her fur.

She twists her head down to you, and you look up at her, along the line of her cheek, oddly thin with all of its fur slicked down.

She looks—

Open, for the first time in…

Gods.

First time since you left The Horde.

“I love you,” you say, just like you used to (hidden under your covers with a flashlight, breaking curfew—out on the roof, way way after you should have been asleep—and, sometimes when you had her pinned to the mat, your mouth at her ear).

She doesn’t move, still staring at you, eyes of yellow and blue on your own, pupils wide. Her ears are flat back against her head, but she isn’t moving, so you keep going.

“I never stopped,” you say. “Did you think I stopped?”

Her lips pull into a grimace, all of her sharp teeth on display, and her eyes slip away from you.

Catra never cried in the shower. Catra hasn’t cried, as far as you know, since you were six. Shadow Weaver caught you—caught Catra, and—

Catra (crybaby Catra) never cried again.

“How could I not?” she says, voice cracking, and turns her head away from you.

You pull away from her, and her back goes rigid as you pull away. You can see her trying to harden herself again, fighting against the hunch in her shoulders, fighting to straighten up, to—

You take her shoulders and turn her towards you.

She meets your eyes, tears rolling from her eyes, streaking through the remaining dry patches on her cheeks, and then looks down at both of your feet.

You take her face in your hands, and make her look back at you, gold and blue on blue-grey.

“I’m sorry,” you say, swiping at her tears with your thumbs as the shower pounding down on you both washes them away, hides them in its torrent. “I… I didn’t think—”

“You never think—” she interrupts, trying to snarl, but not succeeding.

“I should have told you,” you say. “Every time I told you to come back with me, I should have told you, should have reminded you.” You pull her closer, wrap her up in your arms, and, this time, she hugs you back, her thin arms strong against your back, pulling you tight to her.

“I’m sorry, Catra,” you repeat into her rapidly thinning mane. 

Her claws are still out, because she hates retracting them—sharp and painful against your sides, where she’s holding you, and—

“I missed you,” you say, digging your hands into her shoulders, pulling her closer.

And then again—

“I love you.”

Catra sobs against your shoulder, draws red lines along your back, and then she’s got your crying too, too loud for either of you to blame it on the shower, loud, wet, disgusting sobs, echoing against the walls of the shower and off of each other, so distorted and broken you can’t tell where yours end and Catra’s begin.

Finally, she pulls away from you, far enough you can see her face when she realizes she has her claws in buried in your back.

“Oh shit, Adora,” she says.

( _ Oh no, Adora _ .)

“I’m—”

( _ I’m so sorry, are you okay? _ )

She looks so much like she did then, her hands shaking a little, as she holds her bloody claws between you.

“It’s okay,” you say, slipping your hands down from her shoulders to her hips. “If I cared, I would have told you.”

( _ It’s okay, it’s okay. _ )

( _ It doesn’t even hurt, I promise! _ )

“It doesn’t even hurt,” you lie. “I promise.”

Catra blinks at the memory (you’re glad she remembers), and as she drifts away you relinquish your hold on her waist to take her hands in yours instead. You move your head to the side so that the shower can wash away your blood.

She doesn’t move her hands until the water runs clear. (The water at your feet is still pink.)

“You remember,” you say.

She grimaces as she begins to retract her claws (she hates it—it hurts—the last time you saw her cry, it was after she had retracted her claws for the second time), and you squeeze her hands tight to interrupt her.

“You don’t have to do that for me. We’re not in The Horde anymore. You don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not.”

She looks from her hands back up at you, her teeth still clenched together, claws still half-retracted. She’s searching your face for something—

The lie.

There’s no lie to find and this time… she fails to make one up on your behalf.

There’s an audible snick as her claws snap back out—

Directly into the pad of your right thumb.

She reads the pain in your face and snarls.

“Dammit, Adora,” she says, and takes your hands in hers, twisting your right hand painfully so that she can see the cut. “Why do you have to be so—”

She snarls instead of finishing the sentence, pushing you back further into the shower so that the water can run on your linked hands, washing it clean.

(She doesn’t lick it clean, like she used to do when you were tiny, before she realized that humans don’t lick each other clean.)

In the process of washing out your thumb, she must notice the pink water at your feet, because she spins you around to face the spray. You splutter at the sudden water in your everything, while she snarls at the long scratches she’s left in your back.

“Fucking—” the same wordless snarl. “Stupid, self-sacrificing idiot.”

“It’s okay, Catra,” you say to the water, wincing as she prods at the cuts with the pads of her fingers, her claws a breath away from your skin, because she still hasn’t retracted them. “It’s so much better than when you cut me because you wanted me to bleed.”

Her hands still.

You wonder if you pushed it too far, if now she’s going to get out of the shower.

(If now she’s going to slash at you again, for real this time. Make you  _ really _ bleed.)

She does neither.

She just stands there, behind you. Motionless.

You turn back to her, and gather her hands in yours once more. Her claws itch at your skin, just barely scraping at it—

You smile at her.

“I feel great,” you say to her. “The best I’ve felt in months.”

She blinks up at you, and her mouth drops open.

“How do you feel, Catra?”

She just keeps on staring at your for a moment more before she sighs.

“Of all the people to be stuck with,” she says, dropping your hand to drag her own down her face, smoothing the wet fur of her cheek into a single direction as she goes. She tightens her grip on your other hand.

“Come on,” she says, pulling you out of the shower, out the door that has been open this whole time, flooding the whole stall, drenching both of your clothes. “You need to put bandages on those stupid cuts of yours or they’ll get infected.”

(You remember a six year old Catra, bandaging up your right arm, a tiny furrow between in the middle of her brow.)

( _ It’ll be fine, Adora, I promise. _ )

(She hadn’t been able to look you in the eye for a week.)

“Okay,” you say, following her out, and grinning at her when she sighs down at her ruined clothes.

“I don’t know how,” she says, giving you the side-eye. “But I know you planned this.”

“All part of my grand plan,” you assure her. “To chase you through the halls of a First Ones temple naked.”

She gives you a look.

“What? People in Bright Moon where So Many Clothes,” you say. “All the time. I’m feeling repressed.”

There’s a moment of silence between you, as she meets your eyes, face unsure. You recognize the look, from when you were―

Gods, five? Six?

(That tiny, hesitant Catra, full of hisses and claws and so, so much love―if only she could find someone to give it to.)

She slowly raises her hand to your chest, her claws scraping lightly at your skin, leaving pale red lines in their wake, from close to your solarplexus, between your breasts, and up to your heart.

You look down at her hand, matted frizzed golden fur against your chest, five claws neatly spaced out around your heart, her middle claw tickling the base of your throat, her thumb and pinky claws on your breasts, a hair's breadth above your nipples, and you are suddenly very aware of your own nakedness. (You suddenly understand a little bit of why Glimmer couldn’t look you in the eye for a week after showered together.)

Your heart pounds under her hand, a flush slowly spreading out from your neck, down to her hand, and up to your face, and you look back up at her. She looks down to her hand, down at your chest, and her fingers shift, slipping up into more appropriate locations, claws dragging along your skin (you swallow back a gasp) until they come to a stop on your collar bones.

You see her steel herself, and then shove you, full force, back into the shower stall door. it holds your weight, barely, and you blink at where she stands in front of you, hand still outstretched.

She tries to smirk.

Fails.

Tries again.

“You’ll never catch me.”

And then she’s gone. She didn’t cackle, and she didn’t quite manage to smirk, but you can’t help but laugh as your legs slip out from under you, and you fall on top of both of your clothes with a squelch.

You pick yourself up from, give chase, and, maybe, you think for the first time since you got here, as your wet feet slip and slide on the cold stone tiles of the hallways, maybe it’ll all be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, the plan was to continue writing this until there was Catradora cuddling fluff featuring Catra's Fur and also her Tail because nobody focuses on these critical Catra attributes enough, but now that I can just write post-canon fluffy cuddles without jumping through any of these complicated hoops, I'll probably just do that, but you never know. (I'm marking the fic as complete regardless.)


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